_Gloves at Fairs_ (Vol. vii., p. 455.).--The custom of "hanging out the
glove at fair time," as described by E. G. R., is, in all probability, of
Chester origin. The annals of that city show that its two great annual
fairs were established, or rather confirmed, by a charter of Hugh Lupus,
the first Norman Earl of Chester, who granted to the abbot and convent of
St. Werburgh (now the cathedral) "the extraordinary privilege, that no
criminals resorting to their fairs at Chester should be arrested for any
crime whatever, except such as they might have committed during their stay
in the city." For several centuries, Chester was famous for the manufacture
of gloves; and in token thereof, it was the custom for some days before,
and during the continuance of the fair, to hang out from the town-hall,
then situate at the High Cross, their local emblem of commerce--a _glove_:
thereby proclaiming that non-freemen and strangers were permitted to trade
within the city, a privilege at all other times enjoyed by the citizens
only. During this period of temporary "free trade," debtors were safe from
the tender mercies of their creditors, and free from the visits of the
sheriff's officer and his satellites. On the removal of the town-hall to
another part of the city, the leathern symbol of "unrestricted competition"
was suspended, at the appointed season, from the roof of St. Peter's
Church; until that reckless foe to antiquity, the Reform Bill, aimed a
heavy blow at all our prescriptive rights and privileges, and decreed that
the stranger should be henceforth on a footing with the freeborn citizen.
Notwithstanding this, the authorities of the city still continued to "hang
out their banner on the outward walls;" and it is only within the last ten
years that the time-honoured custom has ceased to exist.